After the re-launch of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories in the lauded Lancer paperback series, a new wave of sword and sorcery heroes followed. With characters such as John Jake's Brak, Lin Carters' Thongor and Gardner F. Fox's Kothar, some were good and some not-so-good. One that rose above the fray was Karl Edward Wagner's Kane. Wagner infused his hero with a brooding cloud of doom surrounding his adventures and he was prone to introspection unlike many of the others of his ilk. Intelligently written and often with added healthy doses of horror, Wagner kept Kane in front of readers off-and-on for 15 years, from 1970-1985, with 3 novels and 20 short stories.
This is one of them, from FANTASY TALES, a semi-pro 'zine that usually featured top-notch writers and artists among its pages.
FANTASY TALES
Vol. 4 No. 7
Spring, 1981
Publisher: Fantasy Tales
Editor: Stephen Jones
Associate Editor: David A. Sutton
Cover: Jim Pitts
Pages: 52
Cover price: 75p/$2.50
I fondly remember Karl Edward Wagner as the fellow who first edited the Conan stories and returned them to the way Howard intended in the pages of some Berkley reprints, which were graced with some outstanding wraparound covers by Ken Kelly. Others followed in his footsteps, but he did it first.
ReplyDeleteAnd he is to be commended for that. He was a devoted fantasist with an obvious love for horror and sword and sorcery. We were lucky to have someone like him and it's too bad he couldn't lay off quaffing the warrior's ale. I wish the reprint series had better covers -- they look to me like historical romance novels!
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